Education for sustainable development (ESD) gives students the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to tackle global challenges such as climate change and social inequality. Co-creation between students is essential in this context because it allows us to:
• Create practical, innovative approaches that traditional top-down curriculum design often misses
• Ensure relevance and impact by drawing on both student experiences and academic expertise
• Build ownership and engagement to embed sustainability across learning and teaching practices.
In this resource, we share insights and tips on empowering students to contribute to meaningful change in ESD. Advice is based on conversations with students who participated in a collaborative ESD project at UCL's new campus, UCL East, and Queen Mary University of London.
Empowering students is about giving them meaningful roles that allow them to apply their knowledge, develop expertise and contribute to real-world sustainability outcomes.
We did this by:
• Allowing students to manage their timelines and select project elements that aligned with their interests or offered opportunities to develop new sustainability-focused skills
• Ensuring students were paid fairly and recognised for their contributions by tracking hours worked and offering them leadership roles
• Giving students genuine responsibility: they led meetings, set agendas and made decisions about next steps. They were collaborators, not assistants.
This approach strengthened project outcomes while giving students agency, practical experience and a real stake in shaping sustainability education.
- How can we teach students about social value?
- Sustainability education isn’t just an add-on – it’s a foundation for the future
- Higher education’s bumpy road to net zero
Involve students in research and project design
Student involvement in research and project design is central to achieving meaningful outcomes in ESD. To ensure this, we:
• Co-developed research questions and project goals that reflected students’ interests, lived experiences and curiosity about sustainability challenges
• Trained students in research methods while emphasising their role as contributors to new knowledge, not assistants
• Actively identified gaps in existing practices with a focus on student voice, perspective and ESD priorities
• Left space for organic development: rather than defining every detail up front, students shaped timelines, chose roles and selected outputs, which strengthened collaboration and enhanced project quality.
Tips for funding applications: You can secure funding without specifying every detail in advance by:
• Highlighting the project’s flexible framework and commitment to co-creation for ESD
• Defining broad objectives while leaving room for students to refine research questions and activities
• Emphasising outcomes in terms of skills developed, student agency and impact on ESD practices, rather than rigid outputs.
This approach ensures students are not just participants but active partners in designing meaningful, high-quality sustainability education initiatives.
Create inclusive and participatory opportunities to showcase student input
Workshops designed with inclusive, participatory methods are powerful tools for embedding ESD, empowering students and fostering meaningful collaboration. Try the following:
• Require students to lead sessions, present research findings and facilitate discussions with staff and peers
• Use participatory methods such as brainstorming, group mapping and storytelling to encourage engagement, creativity and co-creation of solutions
• Encourage students to reflect on their learning and contribute ideas for improving partnership processes and embedding ESD
• Provide a range of communication tools (digital and in-person) to ensure equitable participation and access for all students (for example, Google Docs and Microsoft Teams)
• Plan budgets so that students can be paid for leading internal workshops or funded to attend external conferences.
Students from our project reported that leading workshops enabled them to demonstrate their expertise, handle questions confidently and engage in meaningful dialogue. This boosted both confidence and skills while contributing to the co-creation of sustainability education initiatives.
How to keep students feeling empowered beyond the project
In our project, long-term engagement enabled students to collaborate across teams, take ownership and grow confidence, creativity and research skills while shaping future initiatives.
Try the following:
• Develop formal structures to support continued student engagement, such as mentorship schemes and recurring project roles
• Facilitate networking opportunities with other students, staff and relevant organisations to share knowledge and expand impact
• Encourage students to document and share their experiences, reflections and best practices to guide future participants
• Embed student-led processes into institutional practices. You can do this by including student facilitators in curriculum design committees or sustainability initiatives
• Provide funding and support for students to attend conferences and participate in external projects beyond the immediate project
• Support students to apply for external development opportunities, such as the Millennium Fellowship, which our students were granted
• Use collaborative online platforms or shared repositories to maintain knowledge continuity across cohorts
• Recognise and celebrate student contributions publicly, for example, through awards, showcases or co-authored publications.
Anne Preston is professor of education, Elena Dimova is a graduate and Jessie Wong is a final-year student, all at UCL. Nicole Kirk is a student and Rehan Shah is lecturer in mathematics and engineering education, both at Queen Mary University of London.
If you’d like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.
comment